Barnes & Noble may have
claimed to have the world’s largest eBookstore for a while,
but Sony is right on its heels, having just announced that its eBook Store will
provide access to more than one million free public domain books from
Google.
These books include classics such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, biographies,
historical texts, romance novels, and hundreds of other genres.
Google digitized the available titles as part of its Google
Books project. Now, the titles are available in EPUB format and optimized for
current models of the Sony Reader Digital Book.
“We are committed to ensuring our customers have the freedom
to discover and read content from the widest possible range of sources,” said
Chris Smythe, director of the eBook Store from Sony. “We’re proud to
offer access to the broadest range of
eBooks today
– from hot new releases, to New York Times Best Sellers, to classics and hard
to find manuscripts such as those available for free from Google.”
Sony Reader owners in the U.S. can download
andtransfer any of the free ebooks to their PRS-505 or PRS-700 Reader
using the Sony’s eBook Store (
http://ebookstore.sony.com). New eBook Store users will
need to set up an account and download Sony’s free eBook Library software
before they can access the available titles.